Tokyo Confidential: The Son of WaiWai

Now we know why The Japan Times selling stories it did not own:

ジャパンタイムズ、朝日・読売週刊誌から無断翻訳・掲載

2009年1月6日12時4分

英字紙ジャパンタイムズや講談社インターナショナルが、朝日、読売の両新聞社発行の週刊誌の記事を無断で翻訳、掲載していたことがわかった。両社は著作権侵害を認め、コラムを中止し、単行本の在庫を廃棄した。

ジャパンタイムズ社は０６年３月～０８年８月のＡＥＲＡや週刊朝日の記事計１１本と、０１年４月～０８年７月の読売ウイークリーの記事１１９本を、許諾 を受けずに英訳しコラムとして掲載。講談社インターナショナル社は、週刊朝日２本と読売ウイークリーの記事２１本を単行本「タブロイド・トーキョー」「タ ブロイド・トーキョー２」に無断利用していた。

無断利用には共通する複数の外国人ライターがかかわり、単行本の著者には、毎日新聞社の英文サイトのコラム「ＷａｉＷａｉ」に不適切な記事が掲載された問題にかかわったライターも含まれていた。

The Asahi article says The Japan Times and Kodansha International translated and reproduced stories from AERA, Shukan Asahi, and the Yomiuri Weekly without permission.

The Japan Times violated the copyright of the Asahi and Yomiuri newspapers by translating and publishing 11 stories from AREA and the Shukan Asahi between June 2006 and August 2008, and 119 articles from the Yomiuri Weekly between April 2001 and July 2008. Kodansha International apparently translated 2 articles from the Shukan Asahi and 21 from the Yomiuri Weekly, and printed them in the books Tabloid Tokyo and Tabloid Tokyo 2.

The article concludes by singling out the foreigners involved, noting that several foreign writers were involved in reproducing the stories and that the author of the books (while not explicitly stated in the article, I assume it' s Mark Schreiber) also had a hand in producing the WaiWai column for the Mainichi Daily News.

The foreign writers undoubtedly played a role in this, but the Asahi doesn't provide any details beyond implying that they are the guilty ones. Will we find out that the Japanese management, just as with the WaiWai at the Mainichi, were derelict in their managerial and editorial duties, too?

There's no doubt that the WaiWai column caused everybody in the newspaper industry to sit up and take notice and start covering their asses. The Japan Times took the Tokyo Confidential columns offline last fall. Trying to access the column results in a message saying that it is under editorial review.

The WaiWai scandal was brutal for it exposed the pervasive rot within the Mainichi that extended from the Japanese management, who were indifferent to complaints and did not know what was going on with the column, to the sheer hackery of the column's editor, who deliberately chose stories for their sexually depraved content and then embellished their translations. Are we to assume the Japan Times has been just as bad? Were they aware of what they were doing over the past seven years? The newspaper has some explaining to do.